Overtaken

by Mark H. Kruger

As I stood up and headed for the door, I was struck by a thought: They didn’t set a meeting. I assumed the address had been sent with the intention of meeting face-to-face, but the only person that ever indicated that was me. It wasn’t mentioned in the texts at all. Maybe I had it all wrong. Maybe I wasn’t sent here to meet someone. Maybe I was here to do something else. I snapped my head around to see if Noah was still standing behind the counter, but he’d vanished into the back. With no one else in sight, I started to circle the edges of the bakery, pretending to examine the local art that hung on the walls. Truth be told, I wasn’t interested in the impressionistic mountain landscapes or the half-dozen attempts at splotchy “modern art,” I just wanted to get a different angle on the place.

  My eyes darted over tabletops as I moved, letting my fingers dance beneath them, searching for anything that might’ve been hidden there. Every spy movie I’d ever seen played back in my mind and every literary detective I’ve ever loved tried to help me guess what particular game was afoot. I finished checking the tables and came up empty-handed. I went into the bathroom next and checked the graffiti carved into the stall wall. Yes, Barrington keeps its streets clean, but not that clean. I took note of the phone numbers (though, I was honestly too skeeved out to dial any of them) and tried to decide if any of the filthy words Sharpied onto the smooth, tan plastic could have a double meaning. I almost went full Godfather and checked the toilet tanks, but that felt like a step too far. I headed back out to the main room.

  Starting to get desperate, I eyed the blinking Christmas lights that draped around the edges of the windows. Were they programmed to convey some sort of Morse code? I hoped not, since I didn’t know Morse code. For all I knew, they could be screaming the truth about UFOs and Area 51 and I would be none the wiser. I clenched my jaw, frustrated and ready to give up when I spotted the bulletin board by the door. I cocked my head and drifted toward it. It would be too easy to just leave a note. . . .

  I scanned the ads and missing pet posters to see if anything seemed like a secret message, and caught my own face staring back at me. What in the . . . ? I pushed some other flyers to the side and revealed not just my face, but Oliver’s, Jackson’s, and Maya’s as well—all smiling out from an ad for “Ellen Bowes Photography—School Portraits, Weddings, Events.” Except the photos of my friends and I weren’t portraits at all. They were selfies pulled from Instagram and Facebook. Either Barrington had a terrible photographer wannabe at large, or something was up.

  My fingertips sizzled with anticipation as I snatched the ad off the board. What could it mean? I didn’t see anything else out of place on the front, but as I turned away from the board, light hit the back of the paper and made it ever so slightly translucent. I flipped the ad over to read them. There I found a question staring back at me.

  WHAT IS BLACKTHORNE?

  • • •

  Could it be a futuristic video game? Or was it an obscure Bolivian movie about Butch Cassidy? Or perhaps a dive rib joint in Boise, Idaho? These were among the many dubious possibilities I discovered during an exhaustive Internet search, which yielded little of actual substance. Certainly nothing that led me to connect Blackthorne to Bar Tech or Cochran or shadowy conspiracies.

  I even risked reaching out to Maya and texted her, hoping that maybe she was behind the cryptic message, but no such luck. She assured me that she was still safely a thousand miles away, lying low somewhere in the Chicago area. And despite my attempts to connect with Oliver, he blew me off, not responding to any of my increasingly apologetic texts.

  After hours of futile and exhausting bleary-eyed research, I shut my laptop and called it quits. I had to face the prospect that maybe Blackthorne and my secret texter were bogus—meant to distract and send me off on a wild-goose chase. For all I knew, this could’ve been one big setup by Richard Cochran to entrap me.

  I stared at my phone like it was radioactive. Damn, I was definitely losing it. A good night’s rest would hopefully clean the cobwebs out of my brain and help me think clearly in the morning. Blissful sleep was what I desperately needed.

  • • •

  BZZZZZZ. BZZZZZZ.

  I sat upright in bed and looked around my room in a foggy haze. It was dark outside. 11:04 p.m. according to my clock. I had drifted off to sleep no more than ten minutes earlier and now my cell was buzzing. I looked around. Where was my phone? Not on my nightstand or anywhere on the bed. My hands felt around the coffee-colored shag carpeting, fingers combing through the long, dense fibers until I found the phone underneath the bed. The number was blocked on the incoming call, but I answered anyway. I hoped it was my mysterious texter wanting to establish verbal contact.

  “Hello?” I waited for the caller to identify himself.

  Nothing.

  “Who’s there?” I heard breathing. Someone was definitely on the other end.

  CLICK.

  I dropped the phone, unnerved by the disturbing call. I had no clue if it was my mystery texter or not, but it definitely made my skin crawl. I didn’t think it was a wrong number. Spooked, I slid back under my comforter, longing for a safe place to hide. Not tonight. I was no longer tired. My eyes were wide open, fixed on my bedroom door. Staring. It wasn’t that I expected an intruder to break in during the night and kill me, but a good night’s sleep wasn’t in the cards either. That would have to wait for another day.

  Paranoia had firmly taken root in my brain. My mother might have been the one living in Antarctica for nine months, but I was the one who would soon experience absolute zero—true coldness.

  From the moment I arrived at school and wandered through the quad, I was eyeing everyone who glanced in my direction or passed by. They all seemed like potential suspects. Was the energetic redheaded soccer goalie with tree-trunk thighs my mysterious texter? Or the meek wallflower with bad skin whose face was always buried in Jane Austen or Harry Potter novels? Or the artsy drama geek with dreadlocks who insisted on wearing clothes only in lavender and black? Or perhaps it was one of the teachers? Or the bald, goateed Bar Tech Security guard with bulging biceps who seemed to be taking an unusual interest in what I was doing.

  Better yet, maybe it wasn’t anyone at school, in which case I was truly screwed. As if I didn’t have enough to worry about with Bar Tech and Cochran’s scheming, and Oliver hating me, not to mention Jackson’s aloofness and what was going on with us.

  It was at that moment that I became acutely aware of being watched. I casually looked around at the throngs of students crisscrossing my path as they hurried to their lockers. My eyes drew a bead on Lacey Dane, bundled up in a puffy red parka and white cashmere scarf, glaring daggers at me. She was hovering by the entrance, surrounded by a posse of friends, who were all giving me the evil eye as well. Other kids started turning around, whispering and nodding directly at me.

  Shit. I knew I’d been busted. Mr. Bluni must’ve ratted me out to Lacey. Should I grovel and plead insanity? Lacey didn’t exactly look like the forgiving type—at least not right now. It was probably best if I kept my distance. I had no clue what sort of retribution she had in mind. No matter what, I was screwed.

  “Rough night?” The voice was friendly but jarred me nonetheless.

  I spun around. Dana Fox, fresh faced and pretty as always, was looking at me with sympathetic green eyes.

  “I look that awful?” A rhetorical question; I already knew the answer.

  “Nothing a little lip gloss and blush can’t cure,” she gently replied with a reassuring nod.

  Dana then took my arm and led me to the nearest girls’ bathroom, where she magically transformed me, with a little help from Sephora, from looking like one of the pasty-faced Walking Dead into a slightly prettier version of me, with rosier cheeks and plumper pink lips. Not bad for a two-minute makeover.

  “Voilà,” she said, incredibly proud of her impressive artistry and her mastery of French.

  I sta
red at myself in the mirror and had an out-of-body experience. I cracked a little smile and almost didn’t recognize myself. “Where did you learn to do this?”

  “From the master,” she confided with a dismissive shrug, as if it were nothing. “Mom never leaves home without her full face on.”

  “Only beauty tip mine ever taught me was to exfoliate,” I replied jokingly, but it was totally true.

  Dana politely laughed as she tossed her trusty cosmetics case into her gorgeous caramel-colored leather saddlebag. “You should smile more often. Your whole face lights up.”

  “Okay.” I felt myself blush, suddenly self-conscious. “I’ll keep that in mind.” I also felt a rush of warmth in my hands, which I quickly hid behind my back, in case I started disappearing before Dana’s eyes.

  “If you ever feel like talking about anything . . .”

  I stiffened and chewed my lip, indecisive about whether to say anything to her. Did Dana know more than she was letting on? Could she possibly be my mystery texter? The jury was still out on whether I could trust her or not. Nevertheless, I had to say something about why I was a bit of a train wreck that morning.

  “Argument with my dad last night,” I lied, waving it off, which seemed to make it sound more believable. “Just the usual shit.”

  “Sometimes it helps to vent anyway.” Dana exuded this seductive warmth and had an openness about her that made one want to spill her guts. “My parents drive me crazy with their endless hovering. I just want to scream, fly your helicopter somewhere else,” she admitted as an invitation for me to do the same.

  I felt this overwhelming urge to unburden myself—to confess everything about the mystery texter, Bar Tech, my unrequited love for Jackson, and even how much I hated my hair that day. It was taking all my willpower to resist opening my mouth and divulging my innermost secrets. And I might’ve said something incriminating if it weren’t for the ringing of the first-period bell.

  “I’ve got bio,” I announced, grabbing my bag and pushing the door open to leave. We exited the bathroom and were about to go our separate ways when Jackson appeared, walking toward us.

  “Hey, babe,” Dana cooed sweetly in her singsongy voice, giving him a peck on the cheek as he arrived.

  “Hey,” Jackson replied, awkwardly hugging her back and nodding to me as if I were just some random girl he knew.

  That small gesture set me on edge. What exactly did it mean about the two of them? Or me? And why was Jackson suddenly wearing his varsity football jacket, which I had never seen him in?

  “I better get to class.” I hated feeling like I couldn’t talk to him.

  “Remember to smile,” Dana reminded me, flashing her own bright grin, which really did seem to light up the hallway.

  I nodded and hurried off to the nearest staircase just as I heard Jackson say: “See ya around.”

  • • •

  “Hope you’re ready to dive in,” muttered Mr. Bluni as he dropped a six-inch-thick folder of articles and indecipherable scientific charts into my hands as I walked into biology seconds before the bell rang.

  “Sure,” I responded, uncomfortably aware that Lacey and almost everyone else in the class was scowling or staring me down with disapproving looks. I could’ve sworn a few were even mouthing the word “bitch.” A frigid arctic blast, fueled by their collective hatred, had suddenly blown into the classroom and engulfed me. And although I desperately wished that I were anywhere else, it was all I could do to keep myself from literally vanishing in front of the entire class.

  I held it together long enough to make it over to my seat, where I spent the entire period sitting in humiliated silence as Bluni lectured the class on DNA and RNA. I pretended to pay attention and take copious notes, all the while feeling Lacey’s righteous antipathy and indignation about my heinous actions.

  I had made my bed. Now I was going to have to lie in it.

  • • •

  The rest of the day went from bad to worse. After I survived biology, Bluni pulled me aside to break down our research schedule. I nearly had a coronary when I saw how much work he was expecting of me. Three afternoons a week after school, not to mention do a shitload of independent research on my own time. As I staggered out of his classroom, I was reminded of that cautionary adage: Be careful what you wish for . . . Well, I certainly was about to find that out firsthand.

  By the time I finally lassoed Oliver in the quad at the end of the day and delivered my profuse apology, he pretended that he wasn’t even angry anymore.

  “You were right,” he insisted. “Lame idea, the whole DNA thing.”

  “No, it’s not dumb. Maybe there’s another way to figure this out.” I knew how important it was to have Cochran know that Oliver was his son.

  “Forget it. Not your problem.” Oliver’s eyes shifted around, never really looking directly at me.

  “Is something else wrong?” I had a nagging suspicion that something else was going on with Oliver. But I couldn’t put my finger on it.

  “No. I just promised Dana that I’d help her with math. She’s a little behind.”

  “Oh.” I was a bit put off. I never knew Oliver and Dana traveled in the same social circle. “Don’t let me keep you.”

  Off he fled without another word.

  • • •

  That night I finally got around to looking through the mountain of articles Bluni had given me. Most of them pertained to the human genome project and identifying genes. Standard stuff. Nothing unusual. I had hoped to dig up a connection to Bar Tech, but there was no smoking gun—at least none that I could find. Or any mention of Blackthorne either. I even searched online and tried cross-referencing the studies with whatever genetic research Bar Tech was publicly engaged in but came up empty-handed.

  At dinner I casually pressed my father for any details he knew about Bar Tech’s current studies.

  “Tell me what you’re looking for.” He eagerly thumbed through the clippings, which were from Scientific American, Journal of Human Genetics, Journal of Biotechnology, among others, and found nothing that made him suspicious.

  “That’s the problem. I’m not sure,” I admitted. “Bluni was vague. Insisted I read this stuff first before we discussed the details of his research. Something to do with genetic testing.”

  “Every biotech company is hot on that trail these days,” my father informed me. “If we knew exactly what they were looking for, then maybe we could put the pieces of the puzzle together.”

  “I know there’s a connection between Bluni and Cochran.”

  “Their argument could’ve been about a million different things.”

  “What about the fact that Bluni has a PhD from MIT?” I’d found out this detail when I’d run across Bluni’s doctoral thesis about nature versus nurture, which was published back in the 1990s in some obscure science journal. It had to do with inherited traits versus environmental factors. Not only that, but Bluni won several college science awards in biology. “What’s he doing teaching high school biology?”

  “Maybe he enjoys molding young minds,” Dad hypothesized. “Lots of high school teachers have graduate degrees. All you have is supposition and inference. No hard facts.”

  Unfortunately, my dad was right. I didn’t have any hard evidence yet to support my belief, or even to give me an idea of where to look. All I had was a feeling. Not much to go on. My gut told me there had to be a link.

  “Just do your work, Nica. Don’t nose around too much,” my dad advised. “Let me work my end. If there’s something there, it’ll shake out.”

  That just meant I’d have to get closer to Bluni and prove that he could trust me if I wanted to find out about his connection to Cochran. That would take some time. Time I might not have. And with Oliver distracted by personal issues and Jackson distancing himself from me, I was very much alone.

  The days that
followed were an excruciating lonely time for me. As word spread around school about what I’d done to Lacey, I gradually became persona non grata, the girl everyone loved to hate. Most days I kept to myself, eating lunch alone. Sometimes Dana would invite me to join her and the other cheerleaders. The girls were polite, but conversation was filled with a lot of awkward silences, inside jokes, and oblique references to after-school clothes-shopping excursions that I was excluded from. Not that I was a shopping fanatic, but the gravitational pull of my world had definitely shifted.

  I wondered why Dana never once asked about her former best friend. Wasn’t she the least bit curious why Maya had vanished? Or was Dana just happy not to have the competition anymore? She could reign supreme. Socially and academically unchallenged. And reign she did.

  I was amazed by how easily Dana settled back into the swing of social life full throttle without missing a beat. It was as if no time had passed. The cheerleading squad had happily welcomed her back with open arms, electing her captain again. She also became editor in chief of the school blog, which she immediately overhauled with a fresh new design esthetic. And Dana even volunteered several hours a week at my father’s hospital, reading uplifting books to sick patients.

  Stranger still, Jackson rejoined the football team. Not a huge deal in the scheme of things, but very telling about where Jackson’s head was at emotionally. His previously subpar grades suddenly shot back up to straight As. He’d even dusted off his old snowboard and was planning an excursion with the Ski Club. Within just a few short weeks, rebel boy amazingly reverted back to the overachieving jock he was before Dana’s disappearance. Involved, committed, and popular. The Jackson I had never known. Which only isolated me even further.

  Sure, he was still nice to me, treating me with an offhanded benevolence when we’d pass each other in the hallways. Never once did we directly talk about what had happened between us the night before Dana returned. Or what it meant. It seemed like a vague, distant memory, forgotten in Dana’s sudden reappearance. And Jackson seemed even more reluctant to mention the pulse or even talk about how we had changed and transformed. The only transformation on his mind these days was rewinding the clock to a world before the pulse.